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THIS MONTH Linux is becoming more popular and is being used by an increasing number businesses throughout the world. The evening will conclude with the usual cuppa and chat. Visitors welcome. LAST MONTH With the aid of “Red Shift Planet” and its excellent tutorials we first of all took a trip around Mars and viewed it’s two moons in orbit from close up, then on to Saturn and it’s rings, then on to Jupiter which is five times further out from the Sun as Earth. Terry then gave a very interesting talk, with plenty of facts and figures, on Comets, Pleiades (the seven sisters), Orion, eclipses of the Moon, Venus, and many other astronomy topics. A very entertaining and informative evening, unfortunately time did not permit viewing of the sky through Terrys telescope. Thank you Terry for a very interesting evening.
UltraCell Corporation said this week that it plans to ship a fuel cell for laptops next year that it claims has twice the energy density of lithium batteries. The company said that the fuel cell will convert methanol fuel into hydrogen to provide the power. The fuel cell for laptops will weigh 40 ounces and will be about the size of a paperback novel, the company said in a statement. The company said that the methanol canisters will be hot-swappable, enabling easy replacement when one canister runs out of fuel. UltraCell said it first developed the system for the military. It said the advantages of its system are that methanol is readily available and that it doesn't generate moisture. “UltraCell’s novel fuel reformer converts methanol fuel to hydrogen efficiently and in a very compact package," Jim Kaschmitter, CEO of UltraCell, said in a statement. "Our technical team solved several key engineering challenges in thermal design and packaging to achieve this breakthrough. Our system provides a significant performance advantage over competing fuel cell and battery solutions for portable power users.” InformationWeek Yes and No. There are two kinds of accelerators: software and server
accelerators.
High-speed dial up ISP's often use a special server called an "acceleration server". The A.S. uses a fast broadband connection to request the web page for you then caches the page, compresses data, filters out pop-ups, then sends it to you. The software provided by your ISP then uncompresses it. This all makes it seem up to five-times faster. It's great for text, HTML code, and JavaScript, but secure pages, downloads, and streaming media usually will not be accelerated. A down side is that photos and graphics are usually compressed and when you get them, the quality is diminished—if you get them at all (if you are on high-speed dial up and get the dreaded red X where a graphic should be, this may be the reason). The image size may shrink as much as 50% and go from crisp to cruddy. If you don't mind trading picture quality loss for a faster connection,
then go for high-speed dial up. Some do give you the option to control
how much graphics are compressed, so check for this feature if you are
having problems getting pictures.
With Internet Explorer just type the main domain name for any dot-com and hold down Ctrl while you hit Enter. Firefox let's you do the Ctrl+Enter thing too and then some. For a dot-net sites hit Shift+Enter. For dot-org use Shift+Ctrl+Enter. Alt+Enter adds "http://www" and dot-com PLUS it opens up in a new tab. Worldstart.com RAW IMAGE FILES Before we get into the hows and whys, let's look at how a camera typically processes an image. When you snap the shutter on your sleek little digicam, it takes the information gathered by the sensor, cleans it up, adjusts the levels, tweaks the color, sharpens it, and then saves it in a usable format (like a JPG or TIF). Note that not EVERY digicam does every step here, but you get the idea - the image is usable right out of the camera. Basically, a RAW file is the information straight off the camera's CCD or CMOS sensor - no processing at all. Once you're done shooting, you download the images to your computer just like always. However, you'll soon discover that the RAW files themselves aren't going to do you much good, so you'll need to "process" them. For me, that means using the software that came with my camera to save the images as TIFs or JPGs. From there, I'll process them in PhotoShop. Most RAW conversion software will also let you "process" the images like the camera does, with one important exception - YOU control the settings manually (I still like PhotoShop better). Seems like a lot of work, so why go RAW at all? Why not let the camera do its business and forget it? Well, for "regular" photos, that's exactly what I do! However, when I really want control over the image, I don't want a preprocessed photo - I want the "pure", unaltered pixels. So, I use a RAW image format, leave them unprocessed, and save as TIFs. From there I open and adjust them with my imaging software. This way, I have complete control over all aspects of the photo. I can do my own adjusting of contrast, brightness, sharpness, etc. I don't have to make adjustments to an already adjusted image, so I get better results. RAW also has the advantage of being smaller (generally) than an uncompressed TIF file. If you want to avoid the lossy compression you get with JPGs, but don't want to put up with the huge files sizes of TIFs, this is a super way to o. Plus your RAW image is kind of like a photographic negative - if you mess up your processed image somehow, you can always use the RAW file to make a new one. Again, this option is not available on every camera out there, but more
and more models are starting to include it. So, dig out that instruction
manual and check to see if you camera supports RAW images. You may have
a powerful option at your fingertips you didn't even know about!
XP DISASTER RECOVERY Here's what happened: I installed some new software on my XP machine. It told me to re-boot the computer, so, like I good little geek I yelled “Affirmative!” and promptly re-booted. At which point, XP would try to boot, get to some kind of blue screen chock full of error messages, and re-boot again. About the 22nd time this happened, it occurred to me that I might want to try booting into Safe mode. So, I hit my F8 key just as Windows started to boot, selected Safe Mode from the little menu and watched my computer go into another continuous re-boot cycle. This was getting serious, so I donned my propeller cap and started to think (OK, I really don't have a propeller hat). It was then I remembered there were a few more options when I hit my F8 key during boot-up. So, I decided to give that another go and noticed an option for re-booting using the last known good configuration. And it actually worked! Needless to say, as soon as Windows was back up and running I removed the offending program. The moral of the story? I need to get me a propeller hat. Oh, and if
you ever run into a similar situation, hit the F8 key just as Windows starts
to boot and exercise the “last known good configuration” option. It may
just save your computer!
DOUBLE STRENGTH BATTERIES SLOW DOWNLOADS? This is an area where thinking globally can help: Most ISPs and public servers see their lightest loads between about 2-4 AM, local time. When you're presented with a choice of download locations, choosing a server located in a part of the world where it's currently 2-4 AM may get you better throughputs than from a busy server that's physically much closer! Langa.com FIND MISSING .DLL FILES ON THE INTERNET The letters dll stand for dynamic link library. These files contain code that might be used by several programs. Rather than include the code in each program, it is kept in a single file. The programs access the code when they need it. If the .dll file is missing from an application, try reinstalling the program. That's usually a quick fix. If this suddenly happened, the file may have been accidentally deleted. Or, it could be corrupt. Reinstalling Windows is a hassle. Before doing that, go to the Web and
track down another copy of the missing .dll There are many sites on the
Web that offer .dll downloads. Here are two: http://www.dll-files.com/
http://www.dlldump.com/
LINK OF THE MONTH ******
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****** "You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." Mark Twain When you dream in color, it's a pigment of your imagination. "Never ask God to give you anything; ask Him to put you where things
are." Mexican Proverb
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